Today we passed FCC and IC compliance testing, required for any electronic product to be sold in the US and Canada. The test engineers at Element labs in Irvine told us the the Vinduino station tested performs well below the rated emissions spec. Good to know that we can use our existing design for production without modifications.​Here are some pictures from the test location, a special room where no radio frequencies can penetrate.

Conserving irrigation water and improving irrigation efficiency are major concerns for growers. Many technologies exist to collect information on soil moisture, weather, and system performance meant to improve irrigation decisions. But this generates a large amount of data which needs to be integrated and analyzed.​The Central Coast based Vineyard Team organizes an education event for growers with the title "Conserving Irrigation Water" on August 3 in Soledad California. Here you can learn how one grower is using sensors in the field and on the irrigation system in conjunction with software to turn “big data” into actionable decisions. This irrigation decision support system uses environmental sensor data, predictive algorithms, pattern detection, and advanced predictive modeling to generate irrigation “prescription.” All of this is managed through a computer, tablet, or smart phone dashboard.

You will see the devices, learn about the software, and hear how the recommendations generated by the system fit into the overall picture of this grower’s vineyard management.

While most agricultural projects need long distance wireless, WiFi is an easy to use and low cost solution for all projects close to home. If you have an existing WiFi router or hotspot, there is no need for an additional gateway.Adding an ESP8266 WiFi module is easy, as the Vinduino board connector J1 is designed for it. The firmware to send your sensor data to ThingSpeak.com can be downloaded from Github.

After downloading, the code needs to be modified, using free Arduino IDE software. Here you can add your local WiFi login information and your ThingSpeak API key. Remove the WiFi module before programming the board.

After editing and uploading your firmware to the Vinduino board, you can use the same programming cable to monitor data being sent to the WiFi module, and the module response data. See picture for the wiring. The gray wire is ground, the white wire is the data. Connect the white wire to J2 connector pin3 for monitoring commands to the ESP8266 module, and pin 4 for WiFi response data. The Arduino IDE software has a serial monitor that works fine for this purpose when set to 115200 baud.

With wire bridge J6 you can set the module power to "always on", or to switching on when an Internet connection is needed, saving battery power.

The communication modules need a battery attached to the battery connector J5. When not using a Vinduino supplied battery, make sure your battery has the correct polarity.

Europe based Elmitel and Vinduino, located in California, have joined forces to create a leading edge vineyard management application with unique features. The application, aptly named eVineyard, offers full integration of the award winning Vinduino sensor stations for saving irrigation water. It also supports planning and job assignments, as well as integrated pest management and reporting, saving time and resources.eVineyard has been developed in Europe in collaboration with local vineyards, and has been localized for use in the USA in concert with Vinduino.“This is a unique collaboration between Old World and New World companies to combine our know-how of viticulture and IT technology. Our solution covers from sensors to actionable information, and is totally focused on meeting the requirements of winegrape growers”, says Reinier van der Lee, CEO of Vinduino LLC. “This system is designed to meet the requirements of vineyard operations with 1000 acres or more, while being uniquely scalable and affordable for smaller growers due to the use of open data and open source technology.”“eVineyard offers a complete set of software tools to help wineries of all sizes work smarter, save money, and improve from season to season.”, says Matic Serc, CEO of eVineyard. “Built in tight collaboration with winegrowers, eVineyard is fully adapted to workflow in the vineyard and intuitive to use during vineyard work. The data from sensors, work records, and all other parameters are not just archived and available for the winegrower, but also connected together and processed with the help of the agronomic algorithms, to help winegrowers decide when to irrigate and when to spray in order to reduce environmental impact, save costs, and avoid issues. Involvement in European innovation projects helps us bring state-of-the-art features to both small family-operated, as well as the largest wineries, at a suitable price level.”“We use eVineyard in our vineyards to help reduce the amount of spraying, and are very happy with the realized savings,” says Izidor Vehovar, winemaker at Vina Vehovar.About ElmitelElmitel is a Slovenian privately held company, and developer of the eVineyard management system. Our vision is that the crops we consume should be as natural as possible, and produced with pride in a sustainable way. This is why we incorporate the latest technologies and methods in our simple-to-use software for wineries of all sizes. We help growers around the world produce highest quality crops in the most sustainable and economic way.The team behind eVineyard consists of people with agronomic and software backgrounds and is involved in EU’s innovation projects on the topic. We won several European awards for our approach. www.evineyardapp.com​About VinduinoVinduino is a privately held company, based in California. Our technologies provide accurate live information needed for adapting crop management to changing climate conditions. With this information, a farmer can use resources more efficiently, save time, and optimize yield. Our awarded Vinduino sensor stations are proudly designed and assembled in Temecula Wine Country, California. www.vinduino.com

Meet us at AG World Expo Tulare California, February 14-16, booth 1319 & 1320.World Ag Expo is the world's largest annual agricultural exposition. More than 1,500 exhibitors display the latest in farm equipment, communications and technology on 2.6 million square feet of exhibit space. Free seminars focus on a variety of topics important to dairy producers, farmers, ranchers and agribusiness professionals.https://goo.gl/dxUZWs

LoRa Sensor GatewayThe Vinduino gateway receives LoRaLAN sensor data from the Vinduino sensor stations and forwards via WiFi to a ThingSpeak account. To date, the Vinduino project has been using an Electric Imp solution, which required some soldering and PCB assembly.

The following project update, describes a gateway that uses a LD20-H USB LoRa dongle from Globalsat, and does not require any electronics tinkering. This dongle is basically a USB version of the Globalsat LM-210 LoRa module used in the Vinduino sensor station, and, alike the module, works as a wireless UART. Combined with a serial terminal program, this makes a great debug tool to check out the LoRa network and sensor stations.The Vinduino LoRa gateway can handle up to 300 sensor stations within a range of 5 miles, and can be made for less than $100, assuming that an old PC’s useful life can be extended for the task of working as gateway. Because the software is based on the operating agnostic Python-3 programming language, the supported PC platforms that can function as gateway include Windows, MacOS, Ubuntu Linux, and of course Raspberry Pi. For increased traffic handling, more USB dongles can be added, working on different frequencies.

The Python-3 gateway script, although tested to be working reliable for its basic gateway function, can be customized/improved as needed. For locations where access to Internet is not reliable, or intermittent, we added a SQLite database to store all sensor data locally. One possible application could be to store data locally and upload when an internet connection is available. This may also be a good starting point for developing smart irrigation algorithms.The Globalsat LD20-H is available on Tindie

PS: This LoRaLAN gateway is not compatible with LoRaWAN sensor stations.

DB browser for SQLite (http://sqlitebrowser.org) is a great program to manage the SQLite database.Linux install: $ sudo apt-get install sqlitebrowserFor Windows, install the Cypress USB serial driverFor Linux: Linux does not require a special drivers for the USB serial interface, however ensure that you have qt4, gcc, and libusb installed. The USB driver stack in Linux has a built-in driver for CDC-ACM class devices. The Cypress chip inside the LD-20 supports CDC-ACM class, CDC-ACM driver gets automatically bound to the device and creates a device node in /dev/ttyACM*(* -The name of device node will vary based on the number of devices connected).Here is a good description for testing the USB serial connection in Linux:http://www.cypress.com/knowledge-base-article/testing-usb-serial-bridge-controller-configured-usb-uart-linux-kba92551I found that Ubuntu and RPI recognized the USB serial port, but assumed it was an AT-command modem. A solution that worked for me is to bypass the ModemManager: sudo systemctl mask ModemManager.service

Empty vines in our vineyard. We are looking back at harvest in early September and another season that went way too quickly.

This year was an exceptional year. Not only because temperatures were the warmest ever in recorded history. We also had a temperature peak in June that severely affected grape yield in the Temecula valley. Our Vinduino station recorded two days with temperatures reaching as high as 117 F.Plants get tissue damage when exposed to temperatures over 115 F, and our vines responded by switching to survival mode by selectively shutting down clusters. The picture below shows the dramatical effect.

As a result, average yield loss in the Temecula wine region was around 20-30%. This may be a sign of things to come with global warming. From discussions with other growers, it appears that lowest losses were in vineyards with full irrigation (100% ET0) and good canopy cover. Vineyards that were exposed to early deficit irrigation (before veraison) and canopy thinning had more than average yield loss.

There is also good news, with the Vinduino system we were able to maintain 25% irrigation water reduction compared to 2014, and the quality of the harvested grapes was excellent.

Now we are doing the post-harvest fertilization, giving back to the soil what we took from it. Preparing the vines for their period of dormancy and next year's growing season.